What makes you think I like those kind of programs? LBJ pretty much sent the whole project down the toilet.
Who comes up with these charts? Anyway, I made my own chart, I think it explains a lot, illuminates many issues, put things into perspective, and is well researched. I guess Dr Doom would fit in the lower right corner, but pending further research he will have to remain unpegged. I was going to draw colored fields around the items on the chart but, unlike the author of the OKCupid chart, felt that the appearence of such arbitrary artifacts might overly strain the critical faculties of the spectator.
The problem with your chart is, as Jason noted, you might as well just put “Good” at the top and “Evil” at the bottom-- then Libertarians are defined as good, which is certainly convenient.
Lots of people whose goal is also “maximize individual liberty unless said liberty infringes on others” have a more complex definition of liberty and so don’t believe that absence of most state controls is the way to get there. States, after all, when they wield power are accountable to laws/institutions/popular will in ways that non-state actors can not be. Few people really look back at feudalism as a golden age of individual liberty, and Libertarians, whatever the professed coherence of their worldview, find it difficult to point to bright line that demarcates their ideal from feudalism.
That “bright line” would be individual rights, something feudalism utterly lacked, and I have yet to meet the libertarian who couldn’t tell you that.
I think his point is that this requires the government to step in and stop people who are infringing on your rights, and then you need to decide which rights are or are not protected, which is the same thing everyone else is doing.
Of course it requires government. For a libertarian, government’s entire reason for existence is to protect the individual against other individuals/nations/corporations/packs of rabid chinchillas. Libertarians are NOT anarachists, a strawman argument used over and over again to cloud the issue. Wanting minimal government with a narrowly defined role != wanting no government at all.
Who want to do what to them? What exactly is or is not deserving of protection? In the end you have to make many of the same choices everyone else is making, you’re just using different terms.
I don’t see anyone claiming that Libertarians are anarchists. The point is that for Libertarianism to be considered a coherent political viewpoint you have to define the line where your individual liberty ends and everyone else’s begins, and Libertarians often fail to do so.
Hardly. To use Johan’s hilarious example, Gandhi is viewed by almost everyone as a good person, including myself. However, he was in no way a libertarian. The two are not synonymous.
Your chart needs a title before I can put it on the wall of my cube. Will you add one for me?
Infringe upon their rights.
Again, the rights of the individual
Yes, and no. All political systems must indeed address the same basic questions. However, libertarians are not just “using different terms.” A government that taxes its citizens to provide subsidies for farmers (or any other example of corporate welfare) is placing a collective corporate interest above that of the individual. Libertarians would not do such a thing, simply because of their adherence to first principles.
The lack of understanding of libertarian philosophy on this otherwise educated and knowledgeable forum always amazes me.
Often? More like never, in my experience. Visit a libertarian forum, or read a some of the classic treatises of the philosophy. Defining those lines is the dominant preoccupation. Justice Holmes’ famous quote, “the right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins” is a pithy summary of the guiding principles of these debates.
Which are what? What are an individual’s rights? Your previous example indicates that the right to continue running a small farm profitably is not one of them, but can you enumerate what is protected?
Mike, you live in the United States. If you failed every history class you ever took, I recommend you exercise one of these mysterious “rights” you are so confused about. Educate yourself by visiting a library and examining the works of John Locke, John Stuart Mill, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution (especially the Bill of Rights), and various pivotal Supreme Court decisions (Dredd Scott, Plessy v Fergusson, Brown v Board, etc. etc.). Follow up on any ideas that interest you. Perhaps then we can have a less…basic…discussion.
If the current state of US government and jurisprudence represents a libertarian view of rights to be protected then I definitely don’t understand what “libertarian” means.
But … your mention of Brown v Board is a good example of my point. Is there a right to a racially integrated education? Should the government protect that right? How is that not just changing terms from the way a standard Democrat would describe it. (Social equality is important so we should integrate the schools no matter what the locals want)
Everyone wants to balance individual interests against each other in a fair way. What is really different when you talk about rights? Doesn’t choosing which rights are to be protected do the same thing as deciding what’s best for society, or however you want to describe political decision making?
Not at all. Libertarians feel you should be able to run (or fail to run) any business profitably on its own merits. Coercing others through taxation to provide you a profit is the use of institutionalized force for your own benefit, not running a business. Bush and Congress are big fans of this; I am not.
In the alternative political maps thing, this one’s pretty nifty:
From a screed here. (The home site is a group who’d really like a politically effective Libertarian party, rather than the one that actually exists, which is a noble but probably doomed sentiment.) I was also going to post that blacklight Lost map, but couldn’t find an image of it in a cursory google image search and gave up. I’m not sure which axis that falls on, though.
Current state? No. Original state? More so.
Here’s the key to why you don’t understand libertarian thought: no, they don’t.
I think you may be defining libertarianism broadly enough to include Trotsky, then. And pretty much every mainstream politician in America.